The History of Modern Linguistics

1. The History of Modern Linguistics Universität des Saarlandes Dept. 4.3: English Linguistics WS 09/10 Lecture: History of Modern LinguisticsProfessor Dr. Neal R. Norrick_____________________________________

2. Lecture description: This lecture presents the history of modern linguistics, tracing developments in the theories, principles and methods of major figures and prominent schools as they relate to primary areas of investigation from semantics, syntax and phonology to pragmatics and discourse analysis.

3. General information: Tutorial with Matthias Heyne: Mo 12-13h (c.t.) in room 4.08, building C5 3  please sign up on Clix in oder to be able to access online materials!  attendance is mandatory for Magister, Erasmus (to get full credit), and LAG alt (if you‘re taking the exam or wish to do 3 SWS)  attendance is recommended for everyone as preparation for the final exam!!!

4. Bibliography, script, etc: Please sign up on Clix (everybody) to access files!!! Website: Please check the English Linguistics homepage (http://www.uni-saarland.de/fak4/norrick/) regularly for important information, events etc !!!

5. Final exam and “Scheine”: The final exam will take place during the last session on Feb 2, 2010 (multiple-choice questions). Attendance requirements (lecture):  don't miss more than 2 lectures during the WS!!! Sign-ups for the Final exam will take place online on LSF-HIS-POS (for Neue Studiengänge)!!!

6. 1.1 Ways of doing History • history as history of ideas • history as argument for a position • history as clarification from new perspective • history as comparison of theories

7. history as Kuhnian paradigm shift (Kuhn 1970) • prehistory as science, pre-paradigm period • paradigmatic science • normal science • crisis science • crisis resolution, return to normal science

8. 1.2 What is modern linguistics? • scientific study of language begins in 19th century: • reliance on data • development of hypotheses • accumulation of knowledge

9. 19th century linguists developed perspectives and ideas which lay the groundwork for 20th century linguistics: • regular sound shifts • the phoneme • synchronic vs diachronic linguistics • language as a system of signs independent of • individual speech habits and speech acts • We’ll see how these concepts work themselves out in 20th century linguistics

10. 2 Linguistics in the 19th Century 2.1 The Genetic Hypothesis Jones 1786 recognized relationship between a whole group of languages:

11. If languages are related, then what needs explaining is not their similarities, but their differences. The Genetic Hypothesis: languages which “have sprung from some common source” belong together in a language family This Genetic Hypothesis raises a whole set of questions about the nature of language and relations between languages

12. Consider first just English and German - We see that English and German share cognates like: mouse – Maus house – Haus jeans – Jeans rock and roll – Rock and Roll theater – Theater philosophy – Philosophie to this point, the shared words might be explained by borrowing – maybe from each other, maybe from a third language.

13. But there are whole sets of regular relations like: pole – Pfahl path – Pfad pipe – Pfeife pepper - Pfeffer and even parallel sets of inflected items like: I me mine - ich mich/mir meiner we us our - wir uns unser the correspondences are so great that two languages must be related by more than borrowing.

14. consider a whole group of languages:

15. The Genetic Hypothesis: • Languages as belonging to families: • German and English are closely related to each • other and ultimately to Sanskrit, but not to, say, • Chinese or Thai • Languages as living organisms that evolve • through the generations (recall that Darwin’s theory • of evolution did not yet exist!) • Mechanism of change as either progress or decay

16. Friedrich von Schlegel 1808: Über die Sprache und die Weisheit der Inder Sanskrit and language decay • organic vs mechanical form • organic (inflectional) form: stems change, as in Latin: esse (infinitive) ero (1st person future I) sim (1st person, present, subjunctive)

17. mechanical form: stems combine without change as in Turkishsevisdirilmek - ‘to be made to love one another’ sev- ‘love’ is- ‘reciprocal’ dir- ‘causative’ il- ‘passive’ mek ‘infinitive’

18. August von Schlegel 1818 three-fold distinction of languages • Isolating “without grammatical structure”: each word consists of a single unchanging root as in Chinese, Vietnamese • Affixing with unchanging roots and affixes as in Turkish • Inflecting with changeable roots and affixes as in Sanskrit, Latin, German

19. Bopp 1816: Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung  importance of inflections like verb conjugation in language comparison Humboldt 1825, 1836  agglutinating replaces affixing

20. Language classification and Romanticism • Language structure as reflection of Volksgeist • Grimm 1819, 1822: Deutsche Grammatik • Ablaut vs Umlaut (as new inflectional principle) • Lautverschiebung = sound shift

21. Grimm’s Law (following Rask 1818) First (Germanic) shift: T (Latin tu)  TH (thu OE) D (Greek daman)  T (tam OE) TH (Greek thugater)  D (dohtor OE) Second (High German) shift: TH (thu)  D (du) T (tamjan)  Z (zähmen) D (dauhtar)  T (tochter) This leads to a recurrent set of correspondences: T > TH > D > T

22. The standard textbook version of Grimm’s Law is: Sound shift takes place in the mass, but never neatly in the individual words, and exceptions occur, e.g. Latin dies and Gothic dags (English day)

23. Law-like nature of sound shift aligns linguistics with Naturwissenschaft by contrast with Geisteswissenschaft • recurrent process • mass phenomenon • outside human control  confusion of letters and sounds

24. Schleicher 1863: Die Darwin’sche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft Isolating, Agglutinating, Inflecting structures notnebeneinander, butnacheinander Language as evolving organism Paul 1880: Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte • Linguistics as Geisteswissenschaft because it’s historical and diachronic, • but linguistics as Naturwissenschaft in its the methods and statement of natural laws

25. 2.2 The Regularity Hypothesis Verner 1875: “Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung”  no exception without a rule  there must be a rule for irregularity

26. Verner’s Law: differential stress in Indo-European accounts for exceptions to Grimm’s Law, thus: Sanskrit bhrátar  OE brothor (as per Grimm’s Law) Sanskrit pitár OE fæder - preceding stress • apparent exceptions form a pattern just as predictable as the primary pattern

27. Verner extended his law to [] in medial and final positions:  after stressed syllables, [] was voiced to become [], and this [] later shifted to [], explaining the alternation between was and were ([] in past plural wesan shifted to [] then [], while voiceless [] in was shifted only later to voiced[]);

28. cf. Engl lose, lost but forlorn Engl choose G gekoren (veralt. kiesen) Engl hare,  G Hase note: though described later, the shifts in Verner’s Law must have preceded those in Grimm’s Law

29. Leskien 1876: Die Declination im Slavisch-Litauischem und Germanischen  sound laws admit no exceptions Die Junggrammatiker (esp. Brugmann 1878) Language does not have a character of its own independent of its speakers • language change as ongoing process can be studied in languages today

30. Sound laws as fundamental mechanism of language change Analogy and Borrowing always factors in change dove replaces dived in AE in analogy to rode, wrote It was generally assumed that: • sounds in transition always remain distinct • sound change never interferes with understanding • speakers are unaware of change in progress • each language is a discrete, rigid system • dialect variation is irrelevant in change

31. 2.3 Meaning change Reisig 1825: “Semasiologie” as study of meaning to find principles governing development of meaning along with syntax and etymology in Latin Philology e.g. narrowing: OE fugol ‘bird’ - ModE fowl widening: OE brid ‘young bird’ - ModE bird

32. Paul 1880 Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte gave prominence to matters of meaning Darmstetter 1887 La vie des mots étudiée dans leurs significations for the general public Bréal 1883 first used the term “semantics”, i.e. “sémantique”

33.  laws are psychologically motivated e.g. by the principle of least effort and the tendency to generalize, but also by goals of communication like desire for clarity intentionality at work in language change

34. 2.4 The Phoneme letters and phonemes Grimm 1822 used letter (Buchstabe) for both written symbol and sound Dufriche-Desgenettes 1873 first use of term phoneme (phonème) for language sound

35. The search for an international alphabet: • Sweet 1877: “organic alphabet” • broad vs narrow transcription • symbols for “distinctive” sound phonemes as sites of language change: Saussure 1879 phonème for contrastive sound in universal alphabet for comparison of languages (and stages)

36. Phonemes as systematic units in synchronic language system: Kryszewski 1879 - alternations like knife - knives Phoneme as psychologically autonomous unit: Baudouin de Courtenay 1882: • abstracting distinctive sound from speech • reducing the spoken chain to writing

37. Each language has an independent phonemic system: Boas 1889, 1911, Sapir 1921 phoneme as set of distinctive features: Trubetzkoy 1929

38. 2.5 The sociological approach Durkheim 1895: founded sociology as distinct from the physical world and the psychological domain  recognized a collective consciousness (âme collective) at work in society, transcending any individual member  social facts are ideas within this collective consciousness which govern our behavior without our explicit awareness, e.g. dietary preferences, proxemic behavior, habits of dress etc

39.  society consists of a complex web of social facts institutions like the judicial system are highly structured social facts: thus certain acts like car theft count as crimes, lead to arrest, trial, sentencing and imprisonment, and we act accordingly  for Saussure, language was also a fait social, a sort of mean or average not complete in any individual

40. 3 Saussure 1916 Cours de linguistique generale: lectures from 1906-1911 “it is the viewpoint that creates the object” (p. 8) synchronic versus diachronic:  primacy of synchronic description

41. The place of language in the facts of speech:

42.  individual execution of the speech act is parole note: Parole includes sounds, wording and grammar Language (langue) “can be localized in the limited segment of the speaking circuit where the auditory image becomes associated with a concept.” It is outside the individual, who can never create it or modify it by himself. “Language is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only within a collectivity.” (p. 14)

43. Language, Speech, Speaking: really a 3-way distinction “Language is speech less speaking” (p. 77) individual and dialectal variation disappear in the collective consciousness of the community hence: no interest in group variation, register, style etc. Overarching System as independent of individual speakers with inertia of its own: mutability and immutability

44. “The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (p. 66)

45. concept = signified and sound-image = signifier

46. The sign is a psychological entity independent of its manifestation: phonemes suggest activity and apply to the spoken word only Language as a system of arbitrary signs signs with value in system determined by contrast with all other signs  the sign relation is not an event but only “the momentary relation of terms” in the system

47. The Saussurian relation of sounds and ideas

48. A modified diagram clarifies distinct segmentations of phonic substance and thought (from Ph. Davis: Notes 1999)

49. Meaning justifies delimitation of the sound chain phonemes do not provide a basis for analysis mois = [] in le mois de Septembre but: mois = [] in un mois après cf. knife [] vs knives []+ Plural [] esp. since sign is not equivalent to word e.g. porte-plume - ‘penholder’ s’il vous plaît - ‘please’

50. Syntagmatic and Associative (later: Paradigmatic) relations between words generate two classes of values in the language system: • in discourse, words acquire Syntagmatic relations based on the linear nature of the speech chain • outside discourse, words acquire Associative relations based on diverse links in memory